Triumvirate
by Allekha
Summary: Sweet Almalexia, brilliant Sotha Sil, loyal Vivec - Nerevarine remembers them, and remembers their betrayal.


A/N: Draws a bit from the non-canon Kirkbride texts. Written for Seer/Mage/Wise Man square on my Gen Prompt Bingo card.

* * *

The first time he looks at her—

He has never found much attraction in the smooth-skins. Visual aesthetic, occasionally, but never attraction. The only ones he has ever fallen in love with have been other Argonians, with their fine-scaled skin and feathery fins and beautiful slit eyes in all their colors.

But when he first looks at Almalexia—

She is very beautiful. Still Chimer-skinned, with bright red hair and eyes green like the mosses that grow on swamp-trees. And she _smiles_ to see him, and he can see how it moves up her face, genuine as far as he can tell.

Looking at Almalexia, he forgets—

"Nerevar," she says with her red, red lips. "I saw you would come to me again." And she smiles at him, and her Hands don't say a word. And he recognizes the slight perfume she wears, can pick out the flowers it was made from. She would wear it, sometimes, on clouded spring days when the wind was damp and warm.

The first time he looks at Almalexia, he forgets. That her mind is as poisonous as his fangs. That she should be furious with him, for taking away her stolen divinity. That she helped murder her dear, beloved husband, _tainted candles no wonder they smelled off_.

But even though he should know better, she smiles at him, and it looks like the dreams he's seen sometimes, where he is also Chimer and Almalexia meets him in their bed. They kiss each other and trace the other's features by the light of the moons, or conjure mage-lights when the moons do not oblige enough. They trace magic together, when they are tired, delighting in the showing the other the mysteries and small beauties of Nirn. It looks exactly like that, before everyone betrayed him.

So when she approaches him, he smiles back, mindful of the ichor that coats his own teeth. And he talks to her more than civilly, pleasantly, even, though the Almalexia behind the beautiful façade does not deserve a word from him. And when she invites him back into her bedchamber, he doesn't refuse her, nor when they re-enact the roles they used to play, wife and husband. She kisses his scaled skin as if it is smooth like hers. She calls him Nerevar.

And in the morning, he will wake up and remember the crazed look in her eyes when first refused the use of Lorkhan's heart. The way she looked at him _right_ before he died. The things she's done, the way her love must be false even if she doesn't mean it to be, all the lies lies lies.

It hurt, to look at her once, and want the assurance she should have offered him, only to have the false-comfort of her lying smile and soft skin as his wounds began to overtake him.

~!~

Sotha Sil watches her closely as she pokes around the room, the grand central chamber to his clockwork city. She skips from machine to machine, tangle of gears to clanking creation, oohing and aahing as appropriate, fascinated by every little thing. The whole time his gaze weighs on her. She thinks that he doesn't quite know what to make of her. Is he trying to judge her? Weighing her up against her long-past self, trying to understand how much of it she remembers?

She knows she must be very different from Nerevar in some ways – instead of the sharp contours of an Eleven face she can almost see, sometimes, she has the soft heart-shaped face of a Breton. She wonders if he used magic the same way she does, playing with it, using it sparingly and falling back on solid weapons for combat. And surely he must have moved differently; she has always been called flighty, she has always been restless.

But, she thinks, they might have looked at people the same way, searching their faces for little hints to make people do things, like them, but so subtly. "Oh, this is pretty," she says, stopping before a light that doesn't hum with magic. And it _is_ pretty, but out of the corner of her eye she is watching the stillness that is Sotha Sil.

There's something in the way he shifts his weight as he directs her to another of his contraptions, one simple enough that he can explain to her how it works. It tells her that he is uneasy. She feels lighthearted today. Maybe she'll make him feel it _more_.

"Nerevar," he says for the fourth or fifth time, and she shakes her head and gives him her best smile.

"That's not my name anymore," she tells him. "I don't see why you keep saying it, either. It's not going to win you my trust." And he goes silent-still again, and she says, "I remember parts of him, but I'm not _him_ himself, you know."

She dances onward. He stays behind. "For example," she says, running her fingers along a brass pipe, "did you know when I realized you had betrayed me?"

"Nerevar—"

"I was looking at you," she interrupts. Vivec has made her tired of their excuses. "And I was waiting for you to fix me with your magic, because I knew _Sotha Sil can fix anything_. But you didn't. You just stood there, looking at me, while Almalexia wrapped me up and pretended she still cared for me. That was when." When Nerevar had known _tainted robes that's why they felt so strange upon my skin_.

Something is ticking. Maybe it's Sotha Sil.

"Is the tour over for now, then?" she asks, spinning back to face him. She pitches her voice high, tilts her head. Moon-and-Star sparkles on her finger as he nods.

~!~

Vivec greets her warmly, the same as ever. "Nerevar." The permanent loss of his divinity seems to have hardly changed him. He still floats, ever-peaceful, the same place as he always is when she comes to see him. She returns the greeting softly, letting it fall into the corners of the room, and strolls around. He doesn't turn to watch her, simply waits for her to speak.

Sometimes she comes because of strange dreams; other times it is because she wants to prod him about Nerevar and the other members of the Tribunal and what they did together. She asked him, once, why the three of them had betrayed their friend, and he had apologized. But although she cannot see as much as he claims to, she can see enough; whatever guilt he holds is minuscule, brought up by morality and contemplation over thousands of years rather than his own feelings of regret.

She has too much magic in her for the good of any mortal, an Altmer born at the height of the Apprentice's rule, and more beyond that, perhaps from too many potions and spells as a child. Nerevar, she knows, never dealt with his energy trying to overflow his own body, but he saw things, too, that she wonders if mortals aren't meant to see.

This time it is a waking-vision that brings her. Vivec, when Nerevar first met him – before he fell in love with Almalexia, before he discovered Sotha Sil wasting himself and dragged him out into the world – when Nerevar wanted to touch an ordinary prostitute and read the signs buried in his skin. She traces a design on the wall and thinks of how intriguing he looked. How much more ordinary he became, as a divine.

"I have a question," she tells the specks of dust drifting in front of her. It always floats here and never settles.

"Go on, Nerevar." His voice is smooth and perfectly composed. It triggers the edges of more memories; she must suppress them before she speaks again.

She wants to ask, why didn't you pretend better when he died? There were healing potions on his belt, no matter how concerned he looked as he bent over Nerevar's wounds. What sort of warrior would go without them? Or spells, which Vivec could cast without a thought. _Tainted invocations, that was why Azura looked and sounded strange_ , Nerevar had realized.

She wants to ask, why do you pretend so much around me? Is it your shattered divinity? Do you know that without your power, soon I will be able to warp reality more than you can? Does that scare you? Does it wound your pride?

She wants to ask, _why_ , and get a straight answer. But Vivec is nothing but curves and spheres and implications, now. He strings together lies and poetry and thinks it is an answer.

Instead she asks, "Why did you freeze the rock that would become the Ministry of Truth as it was? Surely it would have been simpler to stop it?"

There is quiet, for a few moments. Perhaps he can hear the questions in her head leaking out into the air. Finally, he says, "I was overly proud back then. I showed off, rather than taking a pragmatic path."

She wonders. But instead of giving him useless queries, she turns and walks past him with a murmured parting. Outside, she stares at the Ministry of Truth, reading signs, until an Ordinator tells her to move along.


End file.
